Take Me Out, To The Black
by Arwen Lune
Summary: Collection of unrelated drabbles and ficlets in FireflySerenity 'verse. Pairings, characters and point of view vary. Includes challenge answers.
1. Zoe, Jayne: In Transit

_In Transit_

_.  
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"WHAT are you doing?"

"Jus' walkin'. That a problem?"

"Is when you're doggin' my steps."

"I ain't. Just thought I'd go back to the ship."

.

"Go away. Do I have to be guarded like some insensible grievin' widow?"

"That guilt stuff only works on Mal."

.

"Was he..."

"Monty'll get him home."

.

"Suppose I shouldn't have yelled at him."

"Suppose."

"'Suppose'? You care when I yell at the captain now?"

.

"Why ARE you walkin' me home? Think I can't take care of myself?"

"Hell Zoe, I know ya can. Don't like walkin' on my own. Figgered you'd protect me."


	2. River: Family

_Family_

She ran through the corridor, bare feet soundless on the grates. Not looking back, just running. They always followed and they always found her, and she ran because she always ran, unthinking, on instinct. Panic gripped tight as she frantically looked for a new place to hide, a place safe from blue hands.

The corridor was impossibly long, the air surrounding her dull and thick. Hard to move in. There ahead was the bridge, and she flew up the stairs, searching for the safe place it was, had been. Not now. There were no dinosaurs and no warm memories. The cockpit was empty and cold.

She could hear their neat shoes on the grates in measured steps, never hurried, always unstoppable.

River spun, looking for that elusive safe place, but it was already too late; the first one was through the doorway and turning to her, and her mind was screaming about blue hands, blue hands and pain. They would take her back, to the needles and the shards.

She backed away from him until her shoulders hit the cool metal of Serenity's walls. _Serenity._ A sudden shockwave washed through her system, and panic abruptly turned to fury, as if the very ship were fuelling her. At the touch of Serenity she found a smooth metal object in her right hand and the clarity to stop running.

She balled her hands to fists at her side, letting the man approach until he was so close that she could feel his breath. "_Effective_," Zoe had said when they practised this move. "_Hold the knife like so, blade out past your little finger_."

She knew when the moment was there, and pushed the button, opening the switchblade even as she jabbed her fist upward toward his chin.

It was Zoë's move and Mal's blade that cut up her nightmare, slashed it open in a diagonal of bright red, but it was Serenity that given her the power to use both.


	3. Zoe: Serenity

_Serenity_

"No matter how far the arm of Alliance might get, we'll just get ourselves a little further"

Zoe smiled at her friend's expression. She'd never figured him for life in the black, land-born as he was. Had always thought he'd find himself a ranch, raise horses.

She hadn't heard him dream since... well, since. He'd believed so unreservedly, and been crushed so utterly – it could only be sheer bloody-mindedness keeping him going now.

She didn't think a battered old Firefly could help him find back what he'd lost in the Valley, but she'd never before so wished to be wrong.


	4. Mal, River: Communication

_Communication_

_._

It was just one word, spoken matter-of-fact over the intercom. The calm tone was at odds with the alarming word. It meant 'sit on the floor and hold on'. It was not generally said in the tone of a dinner announcement.

"Brace."

Mal leapt up from his desk chair.

The girl had done well as pilot so far; a quick learner, a good hand with his ship. She wasn't always transmitting on the same frequency as the rest of them, but he rarely had trouble understanding her, even if she wasn't speaking. She could communicate whole worlds with him in a glance. That didn't mean she could handle—

.

.

He came to slowly, with the hazy realisation that the overhead lights were those of the infirmary.

Off to his right was Zoe's voice. "He's awake."

"Thank God," Kaylee sounded relieved.

Simon appeared on his left side. "Do you remember what happened?"

"Um…" he floundered a moment. His head ached, and so did his left arm. He tried to lift his arm to look at it, but stopped the motion with a groan.

"Don't try to move your arm. You've fractured your Scaphoid bone."

River was near his feet, one eyebrow raised at him in that 'you're a boob' look she usually reserved for her brother. He rose both of his back in challenge, daring her to call him that.

She answered him with words put straight into his mind.

_When I say 'brace', I do NOT mean 'drop everything and run for the bridge!'_


	5. Five things the crew never knew

_Five Things the Crew Never Knew about Jayne_

_(note: written for the firefly5things challenge on LJ)  
_

1. He loves cats. There's something simple and satisfyin about a cat lyin curled up and purring. He hopes they'll smuggle cats instead of the Beagles Mal keeps goin' on about, because the girls would definitely try to keep one behind, and probably succeed, and that would suit him just fine. Of course, he'd have to pretend to hate the critter at first, but after everybody stopped fussing he could pretend to soften up on the thing and nobody would be the wiser.

2. He would give his right arm for Kaylee to look at him like she looks at Simon. Well okay, his left arm. Okay, someone else's arm, anyway. Not that he'd be sure how to move from there. He's never going to be the kind of man she needs and he knows it, doesn't want to taint shiny Kaylee-girl with the likes of his rough self. Better to watch her from a distance and silently curse Simon for not seeing her. But the occasional sunny smile thrown in his direction makes him glow on the inside, and that glow lasts for days.

3. He still has that stupid rainstick. He's not normally one to hang on to stuff that ain't useful but every time he moves to chuck it the sound reminds him of rain trickling on the surface of the drinking trough back home. Plus, it's not often people appreciate him for who he is. Every time he hears the sound he sees the face of that bearded old man thanking him. He curses himself for being a sap, and puts the thing back into its corner.

4. He still feels guilty over trying to sell out River on Ariel. The doc, now that doesn't plague him so much, man knew what he was getting in to. But the girl? He'd put it out of his mind, pushed it behind thoughts of the money and the anger for bein' slashed at. But seeing her sitting in that wheelchair the thought had come back. _Selling out little girls. Never thought a Cobb would sink so low._ Seeing the terror in her as the screams were getting closer he couldn't regret the plan not working out. Not even all the money in the verse would have been enough to drown the guilt about sending little crazy back to those _hun-dans._

5. He'd sell them all out for the right amount of money, and he's made sure they know it. Their claws are deep enough into his guts that he doesn't need any more of the family treatment that they've been dishing out for him. He's never been in a job longer, or had it better, or been treated more like a person than here on Serenity. That don't mean he feels comfortable with the idea of others havin' such a hold over him. And he definitely don't feel comfortable with them knowin' it. People close to him have a tendency to turn around and stab him... or get stabbed.  
So when Wash and Kaylee offer to deal him in on one of their games, he sneers and gets out his whetstone instead. It's like they're trying to show him that family makes you stronger instead of weaker, and he's not ready to be convinced.


	6. Mal: Serenity

I found this in my Firefly writing folder and I don't think I ever published it. No idea why not, I rather like it.

* * *

_Serenity_

At first she hadn't been a ship so much as a liferaft. Something to hang on to, to focus on, the keep him afloat on the vast sea of memories and thunder and screams. Something to nurture, though that wasn't a word he would have used back then.

When she could fly again she truly became his _ship_; somehow more so than when she was dirtside. A self-contained world with all he held dear, little as it was. He liked best to be far out, alone in the black. He'd named her Serenity because you could never leave Serenity, it stayed with you, and it was no use trying. The ship was both kinds - the good and the bad, and freedom besides, and it was _home _in a way he never expected to find anymore. Malcolm Reynolds wasn't stable, not by a long shot, but the ship under his feet compensated him with her motions, evened him out, grounded him even as she took him flying.


	7. Mal, River: Signal : Noise

**Signal**** : Noise**

**

* * *

**

"River?"

He approached the girl, struggling over the bodies of the Reavers. Her brown eyes were wide open, and he could tell her mind was shut. She was still standing there, weapons in hand, and it was making the Operative's men nervous. Most of them still have their guns in hand, and one or two were not-quite aiming at her. Prepared to take her out like a dangerous animal.

"River..."

The dangerous animal the alliance had made her. He gritted his teeth, willing his legs to go on a little longer. The others were too shell-shocked and the girl was still the not-girl, the weapon. A part of her he doubted even she had seen before.

"Come... go outside," he rasped, daring to put a hand between her shoulder blades, relieved when she didn't react by chopping off his head. Always a good thing, that. The touch propelled her into motion, mindlessly walking in the direction he steered her, through the wall of alliance men who hastily moved out of the way, their guns-barrels following them.

They left a trail of blood drops on the ramp they walked out on. His blood, her blood, reaver blood dripping from her weapons.

_Have to come back, girl_, he thought at her, wondering if he could beam words into her skull, project thoughts on purpose like she had said he did by accident sometimes. Would she be able to hear them in the noise of the reavers? _Have to come back. Can't lose any more people today._

It was like she wasn't there at all, not really. Maybe she was hiding deep inside herself. Maybe that was the only way a reader could cope with being up close to reavers. Go somewhere away from the screaming.

_The reavers are silent.. you killed them all_, he continued, halting out in the sunlight and facing her. Her eyes were empty. _Don't rightly know how you managed that. Pretty good for a chit of a girl. _He managed a tired grin_. We broadcasted the clip. Everybody knows about Miranda now_.

She blinked slowly at him, and he watched blood from a small cut on her temple trail down over her jaw.

Come back, darlin'. They're all gone. You need to come back and be River. Can you do that for me?

He saw something shift in her eyes, a glimpse of a girl with her own peculiar brand of crazy... something he found kind of endearing most of the time. The girl he desperately wanted to find back right now, because she was _crew_ and he wasn't going to lose anymore crew.

"River..."

He almost startled from the sound of his own voice, loud as it sounded after all the thinking. Huge brown eyes blinked again and then focussed. She looked at him now, saw him, and for a moment he was convinced that she saw through him, into him, all of him. Then something shifted and she was just River again, en route between seventeen and sanity.

"I'm here," she whispered. "So much noise..." she looked around slowly, registering the Alliance men. Seemed to realise that she was still holding weapons. Then, slowly, took in the state of him. He was barely on his feet, one eye showing red mist.

Her axe dropped to the ground with metallic clank that made the Alliance men jump. She reached out, and her touch rocked him. She was different. Focused.

Her touch changed, hand slipping to his back, steadying now. Her smile sweet and sad and old as the turning of worlds.

"Can't stop the signal."


End file.
